It was in this way that I first heard the right English speech; one

fellow as he went by actually clapping his hand upon the sunny face of

the rock on which we lay, and plucking it off again with an oath. "I

tell you it's 'ot," says he; and I was amazed at the clipping tones and

the odd sing-song in which he spoke, and no less at that strange trick

of dropping out the letter "h." To be sure, I had heard Ransome; but he

had taken his ways from all sorts of people, and spoke so imperfectly

at the best, that I set down the most of it to childishness. My surprise

was all the greater to hear that manner of speaking in the mouth of a

grown man; and indeed I have never grown used to it; nor yet altogether

with the English grammar, as perhaps a very critical eye might here and

there spy out even in these memoirs.

The tediousness and pain of these hours upon the rock grew only the

greater as the day went on; the rock getting still the hotter and the

sun fiercer. There were giddiness, and sickness, and sharp pangs like

rheumatism, to be supported. I minded then, and have often minded since,

on the lines in our Scotch psalm:--

"The moon by night thee shall not smite,

Nor yet the sun by day;"

and indeed it was only by God's blessing that we were neither of us

sun-smitten.

At last, about two, it was beyond men's bearing, and there was now

temptation to resist, as well as pain to thole. For the sun being now

got a little into the west, there came a patch of shade on the east side

of our rock, which was the side sheltered from the soldiers.

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